Dary's tank!

[Sniperhank]

Good to hear they are doing well. I'm still scratching my head as to one hammer growing like a weed and my gold died along with some other pieces in the tank...as the most fragile acro I have is doing just fine.


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[Dary421]

Good to hear they are doing well. I'm still scratching my head as to one hammer growing like a weed and my gold died along with some other pieces in the tank...as the most fragile acro I have is doing just fine.


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I'd be bald if I scratched my head every time something weird happened in my tank ,... I get my new shipment of corals that I mentioned earlier on Tuesday ,I'll let you know if I lose any hair after that . :-/


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[Bdonaldson]

Good to hear they are doing well. I'm still scratching my head as to one hammer growing like a weed and my gold died along with some other pieces in the tank...as the most fragile acro I have is doing just fine.


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I feel your frustration Hank. I had the same thing happen. My smaller based torches and hammers are doing great. I lost the thicker based hammer and torch. I just don't understand why this happens.

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[Dary421]

Electricity out here in San Diego county is unbelievably high ,... Third highest in the nation according to the representative, 3 rate hikes or so within a year ,.. A year or so ago what would have cost you $100 is now about triple or quadruple that and rising incredibly fast..... Totally absurd ,...they even have charged everyone for the cost of repairing the giant wild fire that they caused when one of their utility lines caused a massive wild fire ., they actually should give you a little tube of grease with your bill each month cuz you'll going to need it.
We had the electric man come out and inspect everything to see what's using what and where costs may be brought down,.... Obviously the tank prob uses the most electricity than anything in the house. .... So , like it or not cost trimming is in order to survive ,.... The biggest draw and prob my favorite toy is my mcr skimmer which is fed by two pumps drawing about 160+ watts,... I went online and looked around for new skimmers and decided to go check out the seaside aquatic skimmers that I had seen at my lfs ,...Mike my buddy there says they've been using them for a while now and they totally love em,... Made in China but seemingly pretty solid,...Got to play around with them for awhile and they really rock for the price ,... Long story short , I decided that a monster skimmer using only one pump and 40 watts of power or so is prob a better deal than one drawing 4 X's that , I told Mike to check out the pricing and let me know what he can do .
Did I hear water bills ???? That's a whole new story out here , you feel guilty doing a pwc every week !!! Gasoline ? Prob the highest in the nation too !!! Be thankful that you have reasonable utilities where you are cuz trying to have a nice reef tank out here is getting tougher and tougher by the day !!!
Other than that ,..tank and inhabitants doing well .


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[Gregcoyote]

Okay Dary...San Diego also has the best weather in the USA, is gorgeous, near the ocean and has great food. Can't feel too sorry for you dude. Solar panels on the roof get cheaper everyday and Cal has some great tax benefits for solar, unlike the Midwest where I live among coal power plants and zero tax incentives for green energy. In fact here the electrical utilities get to charge three to four times more for anyone daring to use solar and stay connected with the grid. You save more in home heating costs than your tank ever cost.


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[Dary421]

Greg,,,you Don't dare ever to use air conditioning even tho we've had the highest temperatures for October ever ,...it's prob been 95-100+ for 99 % of the summer ,...heating in the winter is also a non issue unless you have gas ,... Gasoline is 50 cents to a dollar more a gallon than other places in the country ,..why? Cuz they can get away with it !!!
It just sucks when your hobby has to suffer ,.... Solar panels ,...they want to charge you for having that too. ,.. Yeah San Diego is a lovely place but be prepared for an extremely high cost of living and lots of people too... Waiting to hear from Mike what the skimmer will run me ,... Foam outlay from these things looked massive although I couldn't find out any numbers ., it's gotta be pretty high up there tho by the looks of it
Just out of curiosity , have you ever figured out how many watts it takes to power your tank ?




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[Gregcoyote]

I'm a engineer. Yes, of course I have. I also own a electric car. My power bill is between $300-400 a month. I got raided last year as they thought I was growing pot. I recon that about <$150 a month is the reef system. But just remember, you need to make multiple major changes to effect your power bill in a real fashion. Calculate what you pay per Kw hour and the cost of the new skimmer. My bet is that it will take years to pay for the exchange. And you may not like the skimming action from a pump/motor that draws a lot less power.


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[Gregcoyote]

100 deg without air conditioning? I'm feeling better about living in the Midwest.


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[Dary421]

Greg,,,That's true with everything tho,... You have an old car that gets 12 mpg so you decide to buy a new car that gets 35 mpg but the car cost you $ 35,000 ,...hmmmm it's going to take a lot of time to make up that too,.... 27,000 for solar panels ,... That'll take awhile to pay back too. ... I think it's just that it makes you feel as if you're at least trying to medicate the issue somewhat .
I guess everything is kinda a compromise ,... I truly love my tank as you love yours but we're forever drawn to trying to improve things ,...maybe this skimmer might not be to my liking,..I don't really know ,.. If I get it ,I'll leave my MRC connected but unplugged until I can see what it can do ,..lfs it sucks I'll plug back in the MRC and continue on as before.

How's that giant starfish doing these days ?




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[Gregcoyote]

He's gotten even bigger. I am hoping there is a limit.


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[Dary421]

... So today I talked to Mike at the aquarium shop , he told me that their supplier had the skimmer I wanted in stock , he just wanted to verify that everything was cool and wether to get it or not ,... After careful consideration and a nice cold beer I decided to go for it ,... Wow ,...kinda exciting ,... Suddenly I. Feel like Greg with his new monster skimmer ,..My mcr skimmer is a external skimmer and this new one will have to fit inside my sump or I'll have to add a new section to it and overflow into the sump ,...hmmmmm ,... Either way I have a couple of days to figure everything out and do it.
With mikes schedule vs my schedule we have decided that I'll pick up the new beast on Wednesday after work ,... Like a little kid at xmas I can't wait ,.... We never really change ,its just that our toys become a lot more expensive and we have to pay for them by ourselves ,..either way ol'dary is excited.


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[Gregcoyote]

I certainly don't regret going from a recirculating skimmer to my Vertex 300. I had to redesign my sump as it needs 10" of water. The self cleaning system seems to work well and it's pulling coffee colored skim out of the water.


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[Dary421]

I certainly don't regret going from a recirculating skimmer to my Vertex 300. I had to redesign my sump as it needs 10" of water. The self cleaning system seems to work well and it's pulling coffee colored skim out of the water.


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Hopefully ,I'll have the same results with my new little monster ,... I also decided to go back to mixing my own Alk and calcium supplements via the BRS sodium bicarbonate and the calcium chloride ,.( which I already had anyways ) . It'll be so much cheaper in the long run than buying the premixed solutions, and at least I'll know each batch is consistent .

 

[Gregcoyote]

That's what I've done for a long time. But I also believe in the use of kalkwasser. So I don't dose as much cal.


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[Dary421]

I've been using topic marine pro reef Salt for quite a while now and for my tank, I dose a lot of Alk but just a tiny bit of calcium to keep the levels up ,..I think on my next purchase I'll just go with their regular Salt mix and see where that takes me .... From my understanding it'll be better and a little cheaper .
On our last couple of visits to kona ,right outside the condo we watch theses kids throwing out their round little weighted casting nets ,...it's amazing just how little time it takes them to fill a five gallon bucket full of tangs ,wrasses etc using that method,... I guess if you had an aquarium there restocking it it would be pretty easy , but if you lived there why would you need an aquarium anyways ?
One day I was in the back of our condo when I heard some loud voices, I quickly went out to the lanai and found my girl friend Laura looking down at this local kid from our lanai and telling him he better NOT be catching ANY humuhumu's !!! The look of shear terror in this kid's eyes as he looked up was priceless !!!! We never saw him again lol.


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[Dary421]

Cool news .... Mike from my lfs called me yesterday to tell me that the dealer did not have a "new " protein skimmers that I wanted in stock however they had a " display " model that had a tiny little scratch on it ( and I mean tiny ) and wanted to know if I wanted that unit at a considerable discount , 100 % under warranty ,100 % functional etc etc,.... Ahhhhhhh yeaaaaah ,... So being today was my day off anyways I drove down to mikes and got the skimmer ,...whoa,...so far really impressive , being a dc pump you're able to dial down the flow etc ,which is totally cool if you're doing your pwc ,feeding or using chemicals etc so the skimmer doesn't go nuts and overflows ,.... This unit uses a jeboa pump which looks like it really kicks butt making a massive head of foam ,... Mike said he's good friends with the rep so replacement parts if ever necessary aren't an issue ., the lfs has been using these units for quite a while now to skim all their tanks and they haven't missed a beat yet,...so far I'm very, very pleased with the purchase ,... The normal price was something like $570 and I ended up getting it for $419..... Rated for 500 gallons and extremely quiet .



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[mr_X]

Seaside Aquatics? I got one of these for a friend. He likes it thus far, but it's his first skimmer besides a seaclone.

 

[coralbandit]

Nice score!
I haven't had any problems with jeboa in 3 years now(knock on wood).
Really looks like a beast of a skimmer like.

 

[Dary421]

Seaside Aquatics? I got one of these for a friend. He likes it thus far, but it's his first skimmer besides a seaclone.

Yes it is a ev6 dc ,.... Seems pretty cool so far !


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[Dary421]

Nice score!
I haven't had any problems with jeboa in 3 years now(knock on wood).
Really looks like a beast of a skimmer like.

Nice to hear !! Thanks coral bandit


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